Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday July 20, 2014 @10:53AM
from the even-better-than-the-real-thing dept.

An anonymous reader writes One of the developers behind special effects used in the film Avatar has inked a deal with airline check-in kiosk manufacturer BCS to implement avatars for personalized and interactive customer service. Dr Mark Sagar's Limbic IO is applying 'neurobehavioral animation' combining biologically based models of faces and neural systems to create live, naturally intelligent, and expressive interactive systems. "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter," Patrick Teo, BCS CEO says. "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."

Yes we all want interactive terminals at the airport. We are not at all concerned about waiting 1 hour to checks bags, another hour to get through security and a third useful hour spent waiting to board. No, let's get hyper-aggressive about how the computer looks at the airport.

I don't think the OPs point was that the waits for check in and security are such that the miracle that is manned flight has been wasted upon us. Rather that if we are going to spend money (and yes any cost comes from tickets, so it's a collective we that will pay for this) perhaps there are other parts of the airport experience that would deliver a better return.

Frankly when I have been able to use automated check in, the existing terminals have been pretty clear and efficient. They're certainly not the most stressful part of the flying experience.

I agree and disagree. I agree that these new terminals are a waste of money from a "please the customer" standpoint. However, clearly the idea that flying in the modern age is stressful is evidence that the miracle of modern flight is wasted on us. Because there is occasionally a 3 hour delay to a 5 hour flight to cross the country, somehow this is an unacceptable level of stress in our lives? In historical context, this is absurd. I just add 2-3 hours to my flight times and don't worry. If we can spe

One, expectations tend to grow as fast, sometimes faster, than capabilities. Unless you are traveling without any connecting flights and on a very leisurely schedule, everyone's assumptions about where you'll be and when will be calibrated to 'your flight; but on time', so delays that would have faded into the noise historically will now throw you off.

Perhaps more fundamentally it appears to be the powerlessness rather than the absolute time that stresses people out, and being at the mercy of complex systems run by other people is beautifully designed to rub your face in powerlessness. Technology has, of course, increased our absolute level of power by chiseling away at the domain of 'nope, go try placating the spirits or something'; but all those places where it used to be that nobody had any control, now somebody; but not you, has control and you can't quite shake the impression that they are jerking you around.

You clearly have not been through some of the airports that I have. It's not the wait; it's the incredibly rude and arrogant staff. I've been yelled at by someone with a bullhorn, had my passport thrown at me, been told to "step aside" when my flight was cancelled and I need to reroute.... I could go on and on.

A nice avatar isn't going to help any of that, unless it means getting rid of the worst offenders that I've run into.

Some airlines (not all, but certainly some) could take that money and use it to

In general, I'd much rather use the kiosks (or, ideally, check in using the web or a mobile app) than go to a human check-in desk precisely because it presents the information more efficiently and it's a lot faster than a face-to-face interaction would be. The only time I prefer to go to the human-behind-a-desk lines are when I'm doing something unusual (e.g. my flight's delayed enough that I'll miss my connection and I need re-routing[1]) and I need an actual brain on the other side of the conversation (c

This "intelligent avatar" thing, however, is probably going to be the worst of both worlds: the slowness of human interaction (waiting for an artificially generated face to actually speak out the words instead of just skimming the text on the screen in a fraction of the time) combined with a complete lack of common sense. And of course the avatar is going to speak as slowly as possible to make sure even the most retarded passenger can understand it, etc...

Aside from all that, it isn't clear why adding a shallow emulation of a talking human head is even going to improve the terminal experience:

If you are dealing with a routine matter, you aren't really trying to convey that much data (and none of the data you are trying to convey are subtly emotionally nuanced or anything, it's basically an "I want to be on this flight, ideally in this seat, here's the billing info" operation, not a sonnet) and existing text and graphic based interfaces, while often questionably thought out, are at least as competent as a natural-language dialog for anyone who isn't illiterate or otherwise handicapped.

If something or someone is fucked up and/or deeply confused, the computer won't be able to help you because it will just format and present the garbage you are trying to sort out. You need someone who can understand an edge case or error and has the power to give a good hard shove to whatever fields aren't cooperating.

I'd bet nontrivial money that the effect of this 'advance' will be to make the experience worse: The licensing fees will be calibrated to be lower than human salaries; but the underlying system will still be far dumber and less flexible than the humans who it will replace (because why do we need so many desk staff now that our kiosks are so user friendly!?); so users whose problems were already solved will have, at best, a slightly more pleasant interaction, and the users with real problems will have to wait in a longer line for a more harried human to fix it.

We all know how totally peachy-keen 'interactive voice recognition' systems have made interacting with call centers, and this is basically the same old shit with an animated face.

You might not, and I'd wager that most people would SAY they wouldn't care about a face, but I could also believe that it could actually improve customer relations.

Kind of like advertising that seems silly. I see an ad for coke and I think "That's stupid, I'm not going to order a coke simply because I saw a pretty woman on a billboard drinking a coke." Yet I'm told it does actually have an effect without you realizing it. People aren't completely rational.

the solution of hiring more people will, of course, not be considered.

Nor should it be. The number of people that really care about a check-in terminal having a "human touch" is probably about 2%. The number willing to pay extra to have their ticket issued by a human is likely closer to 0%. Any airline hiring extra humans to deal with this will just lose business to their lower cost competitors.

While you are correct, we can go further and state that any airlines spending money on "automated, intelligent avatars" will lose out to the cheaper, impersonal terminals we have now for collecting our boarding pass. There is nothing wrong with them anyway. The problems are all those caused by queuing due to interminable security processes - and of course nobody wants to pay more to alleviate that either.

the solution of hiring more people will, of course, not be considered.

Nor should it be. The number of people that really care about a check-in terminal having a "human touch" is probably about 2%. The number willing to pay extra to have their ticket issued by a human is likely closer to 0%. Any airline hiring extra humans to deal with this will just lose business to their lower cost competitors.

Ultimately this.

A lot of the stress at the airport is self inflicted because people don't want to pay for things. They don't want to pay baggage so they lug an oversized case everywhere. In the US it has been a race to the bottom and it's been so bad that you don't have any airlines left that an Australian, Asian or European would consider to be "full service".

Let me be clear that I certainly don't blame individuals for the TSA cluster fuck, but beyond that it's down to cheap people being too cheap fo

It's not the human *touch* that people crave in a complicated interaction with a system. It's human *versatility*.

Thus more personnel does no good, if those personnel are rigidly controlled, lack information to advise or authority to act. The fact that they're also expected to be jolly and upbeat as they follow their rigid and unyielding rules only turns the interaction with them into a travesty of a social interaction.

What would work better is a well-designed check-in system that handles routine situation

I fly a regular route with American from a small airport; if I get the usual counter staff I don't get charged luggage fee. Giving up $25 to make a guy who drops $2k - $10K on airfare every month moderately happy is probably not a bad idea. (And no, I have not reached the exalted flyer status, as my flying is spread over many airlines.)

But you will get all the claims that minimum wage laws, labour laws, inflation (money printing) and basically rising prices somehow increase economic activity rather than putting more pressure on business to automate (use capital where labour was used initially).

That's because consumers do not want to pay for more people just so they can have 'human touch' during check-in. In fact, I personally actively avoid talking to humans for processes that can easily be performed by myself. Why do I need a person who may or may not have a high school diploma click some buttons that I can click myself? Only about 5% of cases require a human to deal with an exception to the basic check-in process, which means you only need 5% of the staff.

Another thing not considered: that the person who provided that comment was a complete idiot.

"Hi sir, you just checked into your flight, which is totally fun, would you like to continue the thrill by standing around for a few minutes longer and taking a survey about your experience? Yes? GREAT! If you could stop drooling for a minute, tell us how we can improve your experience? You like to look at human faces? Oh, you said 'feces'? I'll just write down faces, how about that?"

"One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter,"

So we're going to take away the last humans and replace them with mindless robots.

Well done.

Certainly aced that one.

(As an aside, I've just come through London Stansted including an extra hour in the security queues which went all the way back to the gate when you come off the plane, and I spent much of it yelling and attracting the attention of people around me - my primary beef was that the humans had no humanity, nobody had bothered to go down the line, tell us what we were waiting for, how long it was expected to take, what they could do for special cases - young children, disabled passengers, elderly passengers unable to stand in queue, etc. - or would even bother to do anything to help or give answers.

And when we got to the front, all the "electronic passport" aisles were gone and only the manned aisles were left. I know why they were removed - nobody uses them. They are too much a faff, you can't take children through them, if you're travelling with someone with a non-chipped passport, you have to separate and then wait (hope) blindly for each other on the other side, etc. so even when they were opened, less than 1% of the people there ever used them.

Sorry, if you want the human touch, you have to put humans in there AND then listen to the humans queuing alongside them AND then let those humans sort each other's problems out. Reliance on machines? When I got to the long-stay car park to retrieve my car, it wouldn't let my (immaculately preserved) ticket through two different barriers, so I had to press the button and get someone to let me out, costing me another 10 minutes. Thank god that wasn't my passport at the end of a hour-long queue.

"One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter,"

So we're going to take away the last humans and replace them with mindless robots.

It's a self-service check-in, it's already a mindless robot.

Though I fail to see how replacing the dumb kiosk with a more intelligent avatar will really make anything better, I don't really want the kiosk to ask me how my day is going, or tell me I better bundle up because it's going to be a cold day in Chicago, I just want to check in as quickly and easily as possible.

Though I fail to see how replacing the dumb kiosk with a more intelligent avatar will really make anything better, I don't really want the kiosk to ask me how my day is going, or tell me I better bundle up because it's going to be a cold day in Chicago, I just want to check in as quickly and easily as possible.

This.

Using some supposedly intelligent avatar instead of a clear, simple, and well designed UI ranks right up there with the automated call interfaces that ask you to speak your answers instead of pressing the number buttons on your phone. People complained because pushing numbers sucked; RCA was incorrect; we ended up with a system 10x's as frustrating that takes 3x's longer to operate.

I've found the self-service check-in's to be rather good, but the physical integration of them has left a lot to be desired. IE. there is no line for them.. there's just a bunch of them scattered about. Then you still have to take your bags somewhere, and figuring out where that line is, and how it differs from the line that includes getting your ticket, is often a complete mess. You often have to wade back through all the folks wandering around the kiosks to find the front of the new line. It should be a LOT simpler and organized much better... though I'm sure this is a per-airport, and possibly per-airline, issue, so YMMV.

That sums up my impression of the state of airports that have adopted the machines wholesale. The machines are just scattered around, and there is no clear "line" to either check your bags or speak to a human. You just need to trace the ropes to find a gap, and hope that the line you started is the place where the lone counter person is looking for the next person to serve. If it's especially busy, there may be two people at the counter, but anyone else on staff will be wandering around to help people with

Using some supposedly intelligent avatar instead of a clear, simple, and well designed UI ranks right up there with the automated call interfaces that ask you to speak your answers instead of pressing the number buttons on your phone. People complained because pushing numbers sucked; RCA was incorrect; we ended up with a system 10x's as frustrating that takes 3x's longer to operate.

Sigh all you want. If people like you were willing to pay extra for the human touch, then there would be two tiers of tickets offered by airlines: self-checkin and human check-in. Human check-in would of course be an extra $100 or so. Still interested?

To underscore this even more, every airline I know (US) has a choice between kiosk and human. The human check-in has no incremental monetary cost. You just have to wait in a significant line. Very few people choose to pay this tiny cost just to have a person c

I'm becoming less and less of a fan of the "buggy whip" example. Mainly because we currently feel it's so easy and simple to point and laugh at those archaic, buggy whip makers.The concept changes drastically when you realize how much of the middle class has/will be gutted by automation, and now it's not just buggy whip guys losing their job, it's YOU. In the position you thought was too intelligent and necessary, you're suddenly automated out of existence and somebody else is making jokes about whatever it

It's well-known representative example and is not meant to be the best example.

Your premise is pretty egocentric, though. We are living through a relatively quiet period with new innovation, compared to the industrial revolution and the 1990s. If the social order didn't collapse then, I'm pretty sure we'll be fine.

But if you want to slow down even more the automation of jobs currently filled with humans, then stop adding to the price of employing humans while the price of buying automation falls. That means

Your scenario is no possible. What happens is that there will be a sub-optimal balance between automation and jobs, and the cause of this will be idiot voters using government for things that does not make sense.

Society needs to figure it out, but that doesn't mean halting progress, it doesn't mean returning to a subsistence lifestyle and it doesn't meant that the middle classes are some important protected group that we dare not touch.

Sigh all you want. If people like you were willing to pay extra for the human touch, then there would be two tiers of tickets offered by airlines: self-checkin and human check-in. Human check-in would of course be an extra $100 or so. Still interested?

Yes, it's called 'Business Class'. I walk straight up to the checkin counter, hand over my bags, and they do the rest, so I don't have to worry about what passport I'm supposed to use this time, or whatever other nonsense has changed since I last flew.

And when we got to the front, all the "electronic passport" aisles were gone and only the manned aisles were left. I know why they were removed - nobody uses them. They are too much a faff,

I use the electronic "smart gates" in Australia all the time, I've never had an issue with them. They get used a lot but there's never a long like at them because they're faster than a manned counter.

My biggest fear is another overzealous customs officer in another country doesn't do what one Malaysian one did and stamp the centre page that has the chip in it and the words "Do Not Stamp This Page" in bold lettering on it. Getting another passport is a bitch.

I always fly with JAL now because their economy class gives you 10cm extra leg room. It doesn't sound like much but it makes a massive difference. They have plenty of staff to do check-in and let you take an extra hold bag over what most of the competition offer. They charge the same or only slightly more (Â£20-30 on a flight costing Â£850).

Don't put up with shitty service for the sake of a few bucks or shopping around.

Natural communication? In a crowded airport with a machine? Pull the other one, it squeaks.

Artificial intelligence is nowhere near good enough to translate "I want an isle seat for my son and TIMMY STOP POKING YOUR SISTER, sorry, An isle seat for my son and I have a Delta flight from Dallas, can you make sure it will arrive in time to connect?" That's the kind of thing human attendants can cope with easily. The best kind of interface for ticketing is an unintelligent wizard on a touch screen with big icons and a "help" button for an attendant.

The human is the weak link in the check in chain. The self check in terminals are fine, but fat lot of good it does when i still have to stand in a huge line just to have the human behind the desk put a sticker on my checked baggage. WTF is that about? weighing? certainly a scale could be present at the terminal, and until computer vision is reliable enough, a human could simply watch to make sure people arent just pretending to weigh their 80lbs luggage. Bombs? i thought that's what the TSA is for. Clearly the staff checking your ID is not the biggest stopgap in preventing bombs on board.
Why can't the terminal simply spit out my baggage sticker for myself to put on?

The self check in terminals are fine, but fat lot of good it does when i still have to stand in a huge line just to have the human behind the desk put a sticker on my checked baggage. WTF is that about?... Why can't the terminal simply spit out my baggage sticker for myself to put on?

It may be about putting the sticker on correctly. If the sticker isn't put on correctly (positioned so automated scanners can read the bar codes and securely attached so it won't fall off), the bag may not make it to the destination in a timely fashion. Granted that putting on the sticker isn't hard, but some people have difficulty with seeming simple things. In addition, having an airline employee attach the sticker before the luggage is accepted allows for a human check to ensure things like: the bag is w

It may be about putting the sticker on correctly. [...] allows for a human check to ensure things like: the bag is within dimensional limits, the bag isn't already damaged, [...]

Most (if not all) airports in Norway have had the machines print out luggage tags for you to put on yourself for years now. Some have self-service bag-drops where you scan the luggage tag (and iirc fingerprint) and be on your way. I'm sure the machine would refuse overweight luggage, and there is usually a person nearby keeping an eye on everything.

Of course, if traveling to the US (and probably a number of other destinations as well), you're required to interact with a manned counter at some point.

You're right. There's absolutely no need for humans at the baggage drop, except perhaps one person offering assistance if people have problems.

Flew from Gatwick to TromsÃ with Norweigian in December. It was fantastic! Self check-in machine printed off a sticker for my luggage. Placed it in an automated bag drop, and the only queueing I had to do was at the security theatre.

KLM has something similar. BA at Heathrow still has manned desks but the kiosks print out the sticker so it is just a case of

Great. This is going to be like trying to talk to one of those software customer service reps on the phone: insanely inefficient. [youtu.be] As long as there is nothing unusual about your checkin, existing kiosks work great. If there is something unusual, the fake human won't be able to handle it any better than a standard interface will, and you'll need a real human.

I think that going through tree of discrete selections has a better solution in touchscreen than in glorified answer-phone system with space-wasting avatar visualisation.Maybe they could prototype it first by putting terminals videoconferencing to live people which could not fully understand what you are telling them (certain offshore locations come into mind) and see how much it improves the passenger checkin quality. If it works perfectly, THEN they can solve problem of video lines by generating almost-human computer avatars. I have a feeling that people will prefer impersonal selections to videoconference...

A few minutes waiting for a kiosk to be available, couple of more minutes tapping the screen. Had the boarding pass and baggage claim ticket in hand. Then waited at least 15 minutes for a person to wander by and take the bag I had checked (for a $25 surcharge). Maybe the avatar will recognize the annoyance building and ping someone to come over.

"Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."

Remember those stickers on the registers at K-Mart, facing the cashier, with the letters, "TYFSOK"? It stands for, "Thank You For Shopping Our K-Mart." The sticker was to remind the beleagured minimum wage employee to recite the words. Did anyone, ever, feel that the person mechanically parroting that catch phrase actually cared? How about the greeters at Wal Mart? (I think they've pretty much gone away, like the TYFSOK stickers)

You can teach an automaton to mimick human emotion, but even when it is an actual human such mimickry is patronizing and irritating. If you want human warmth, hire warm humans (downside; warm humans who can keep their positive mental attitude while working at an airport are expensive and they need time to recover from their shifts).

If you are going to use computers, embrace their natural advantages. Computers are fast, predictable, and emotionless. Those can be good characteristics in a user interface -- particularly when the customer just wants to get the process finished and move on. Work with the entire industry to develop a standard interface and sequence so the user and bang through it without even engaging their brain -- everyone is better off with travellers on autopilot. Painting a computer in whore's makeup won't make it a lover for any but the most desperate.

And, for you air travellers, a quick question: Why are you still endorsing them? Why are you still agreeing to be subjected to the TSA and the awful customer service of the airlines? Have you really made all reasonable efforts to switch to alternatives? If you aren't making significant personal sacrifices to cut their cashflow, you are lending aid and comfort to the enemy. I've driven 6,000 miles in the past year avoiding air travel. What are you doing?

When travelling from the UK to Chile... Flying is pretty much the only sensible option for me right now.I pretty much hate the entire experience but there are not better alternatives for when you NEED to travel to some places.

When travelling in and around the UK I would never fly if I can avoid it as the entire experience has become pretty inconvenient.

Excellent -- it sounds like you are making all reasonable efforts to cut their cashflow.

I'm one of those people who actually find air travel convenient. The annoyances of check-in and the TSA (I always opt out of the scan) and having your partner have to drive you to the airport really pale in comparison to the huge amount of time and energy saved compared to driving. I can even sleep on an airplane and read in line at the gate. Road trips are fun if you're travelling in company, but if you're travelling alone, flying is so much more convenient.

I check in online. When I get to the airport, why can't I just swipe my passport drop my bags on the conveyor and go on my way. Sometimes that works, but at least half the time while someone types the Oxford English Dictionary into a keyboard. I'm not changing flights. I'm doing exactly what my reservation, and online checkin said I was doing.

I don't want a human touch, I just want to get on my airplane.

On the occasions where I am doing something unusual, or where something goes wrong, an AI avatar is NO

Expect human reaction to computers pretending to be human to be angry and creped out.

When you do this you are essentially selling a lie to the customer even though it is clear machine is a machine and not a person the emulation of a person is still perceived as deception and therefore offensive.

If airlines feel compelled to waste their money on something other than reasonably usable kiosk terminals why not invest it to reverse multi-decades trend of making experience of flying as lame, oppressive and uncomf

I went through an automated car wash recently, and instead of pushing a few buttons and swiping my card, I got to listen to a video of a cheerful smiling woman in a car (with her adorable "daughter" beside her!) explaining each step in painful marketese... every time I did anything, she started over, talking (obliquely, tediously) about the new step I was on... by the time I could actually drive into the car wash I was ready to rip out the screen and beat myself over the head with it.

If you are going to automate, then at least make it quick and efficient. If you want the human touch, use actual humans. (Well, just not that actual human, please.)

I don't mind dealing with computers. I don't mind dealing with people. I hate dealing with computers that pretend to be people. "Wait a minute while I look that up for you." (pretend typing noise) NOOOOOO thanks. If people want a more human experience, they're saying they want actual humans, not computers that pretend to be humans.

Patrick Teo, BCS CEO says. "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."Translation, "AIML is less than Minimum Wage."

Can we please set some sort of standard for the vocabulary of artificial intelligence? Because I'm fairly certain that kiosk manufacturers "BCS" has not created a networked artificial intelligence just to help you decide if you want to upgrade to more leg room.

It's a set of video recordings set to play in response to input stimuli and complete actions in the background and nothing more. It's "smart".

I propose:Intelligent -- Smart and Sentient.Sentient -- For others to describe/debate.Smart -- Capable of mak